Truecaller clashes with India’s telecom regulator over anti-spam rules

Truecaller has opened a nationalist combat with India’s telecom regulator implicit rules governing caller ID apps, saying the country’s anti-spam model is making it harder to support consumers from unwanted calls successful its biggest market.

On Wednesday, CEO Rishit Jhunjhunwala (pictured above) took to X to publically situation the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), accusing the watchdog of preventing Truecaller from displaying community-reported spam accusation for calls from the country’s dedicated 1400 and 1600 fig series, a regularisation helium said had enabled maltreatment of those numbers and eroded spot successful morganatic concern calls.

The quality stems from a model introduced successful 2024 nether which India’s telecom authorities designated the 1400 and 1600 fig bid for commercialized communications, with businesses utilizing the erstwhile for telemarketing calls and the second for service- and transaction-related calls. TRAI aboriginal mandated the migration to the dedicated numbering series, saying the determination would assistance consumers place morganatic concern communications and curb spam and scam calls.

The model was rolled retired amid increasing concerns implicit spam and scam calls successful India, 1 of the world’s largest telecom markets, wherever regulators and telecom operators person rolled retired aggregate measures to curb fraudulent communications. Last year, the Indian communications ministry said authorities disconnected much than 2.1 cardinal fraudulent mobile numbers and took enactment against much than 100,000 entities implicit the preceding year, underscoring the standard of the challenge.

Jhunjhunwala argued the argumentation has produced unintended consequences. Citing interior institution data, helium said consumers person progressively mislaid spot successful the designated fig series, with Truecaller users ignoring 81% of calls from the 1400 bid and 79% from the 1600 bid implicit the past 8 months. During the aforesaid period, users manually blocked 74 cardinal calls from the 2 fig series, portion regular blocking actions against 1600-series numbers person much than tripled since October 2025, helium said.

Unable to people those numbers arsenic spam, Truecaller alternatively introduced a “Frequently Blocked” badge to alert users erstwhile a fig from the designated bid has been blocked by galore people.

The unusually nationalist disapproval came aft Indian concern regular The Economic Times reported that TRAI had sought powers nether India’s Information Technology Act to instrumentality enactment against caller ID apps specified arsenic Truecaller, Hiya, and Whoscall for labeling numbers from the designated 1400 and 1600 bid arsenic spam.

TRAI and India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, which would see immoderate specified proposal, did not instantly respond to requests for comment.

The quality comes astatine a pivotal clip for Truecaller, whose halfway caller ID concern has been facing increasing regulatory and competitory pressures arsenic the institution expands into caller products and services. India remains its largest marketplace by a wide margin, with more than 350 million of its 500 cardinal monthly progressive users based successful the country, according to the company.

Jhunjhunwala said Truecaller would stock its information with the Indian IT ministry arsenic portion of the regulatory process, arguing that immoderate determination connected caller ID apps should beryllium evidence-based.

“Penalize the atrocious actors, not the ones similar Truecaller that marque a important affirmative impact,” helium wrote.